ASM's sun-sational move

MANCHESTER-based air service development adviser ASM is flying high with successes in Europe and the Caribbean. ASM, which works for airports and tourist boards to expand routes and promote economic development, has helped attract new flights to St Lucia and has been appointed as adviser for a new gateway in the Polish city of Lublin.

MANCHESTER-based air service development adviser ASM is flying high with successes in Europe and the Caribbean.

ASM, which works for airports and tourist boards to expand routes and promote economic development, has helped attract new flights to St Lucia and has been appointed as adviser for a new gateway in the Polish city of Lublin.

As consultant to the St Lucia Tourist Board , it has helped secure services by British Airways and low-cost carrier JetBlue . BA will operate five weekly services from Gatwick from October, while JetBlue is to run flights from New York's John F Kennedy International Airport.

Jon Woolf, a consultant at ASM, said: "The news reinforces the point that intense activity is continuing in the route development sector, even in these difficult economic times.

"Any market and consumer-focused airport, carrier or other agency will be positioning itself for the future. And that means doing everything possible to protect and develop existing routes as well as planning new ones."

In Poland, ASM will work for three years as marketing and route development adviser on the new Lublin airport, after completing background work which helped secure funding.

Lublin is the cultural and administrative capital of the Lubelskie region in the east of the country. It borders Ukraine and Belarus and is close to Russia.

Gordon Bevan, of ASM, said: "The lack of convenient air connections between Lublin and the rest of Poland has long been regarded as a basic impediment to local development and a barrier to realising the region's potential in tourism, new technologies and processing industry.

"We were initially engaged to provide market assessment of the scope and scale of a new airport, and it is most satisfying that we are now carrying forward this exciting opportunity."

ANDY Reed and Gareth Jones, of support services and engineering specialist AECOM's Manchester office, have been appointed as project directors for a new hospital in Abu Dhabi. The 24-storey Cleveland Clinic Hospital will accommodate 360 patients and will cost nearly £10m to build. It is due to open in 2012.